Beneath the SABINE

摘要

The rambling, 485-mile Sabine River has played a key role in the history of America's Gulf Coast. Since early last century, it has seen a good deal of commercial shipbuilding and has been a resting place for surplus Navy ships. At its terminus is The Port of Orange, a deep-water port that has operated since 1916. Forming the boundary between Texas and Louisiana, the Sabine is literally clogged with history. In fact, it is so clogged with the remains of watercraft and other debris that navigation on the waterway has become dangerous. To shed light on the history and navigational hazards that lie beneath the Sabine River, the Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District and PBS&J worked on a project that looked into a 20-mile stretch of the river bordering Orange County, Texas, and Calcasieu Parish, La. The project took place between 2000 and late 2001. Our firm used high-tech, underwater remote-sensing equipment, including side-scan sonar, a cesium magnetometer and a differentially corrected Global Positioning System (GPS).